Monday, March 4, 2013

Through the use of Adobe's EchoSign, we got rid of the old hand-written, print out, scan or photograph, then fax or email of your form. It was a hassle for our contributors, and a hassle for our administrators. Faxes fail, mail gets lost, and sometimes pictures or scans turn out poorly. It was time to find a more user-friendly solution, and the Foundation is happy to finally offer this electronic form.

The new form is easy to fill out right on the site, guiding you through each of the required fields such as your name, bug tracker ID, address, and initial license. If you're signing the form on behalf of an organization, there's a check box to specify this, and then you are asked near the bottom to state your title in the organization. Lastly, your signature is either generated from your typed name, or you can draw your own or upload a signature file of your own.

Once you submit the form, you'll receive an email from echosign.com to verify the email address you entered. Once you click to confirm your address, the form will be emailed to the PSF and will be recorded.

We require all contributors to CPython to have a signed form, and we hope this makes it easier for potential contributors to join up and help make Python better. It's available just in time for PyCon and the CPython sprint that will be occurring March 18 through 21 in Santa Clara, California. Join us at the sprint, sign your contributor form, and help us fix some bugs or add some features!